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fall fashion issue
August 15, 2014

YSL Muse Marina Schiano’s Scrapbook of Fame

By Carl Swanson

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Photo: Marina Schiano

“I used to take a camera everywhere, like Andy,” says Marina Schiano on the phone from her home in Brazil, where she moved from New York a decade ago. Schiano, a former model, knew Warhol through her longtime boss, Yves Saint Laurent, for whom she worked right through the rococo ’70s, rising from running his men’s shop to becoming, as she puts it, his “alter ego.” “With Andy I had so many Polaroids. I had so much fun.” She was often in the right place at the right time, invited along for her alchemical chic, effusive and amusing. “Everybody loved me,” she says, believably. She knew how to make everyone look good around her. Schiano was born in Naples, Italy, and was taken up by the fashion photographer Hiro in the pages of ­Harper’s Bazaar in the late ’60s, which is how she eventually met, as she always calls him, “Yves.” Over the next few decades, she met most everyone else identifiable by a first name only, all the more so after she left fashion to work for “Tina” at Vanity Fair beginning in the late ’80s, styling celebrities with photographers like Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, and Helmut Newton. “They have to trust you to transform them,” she says of her skittish, vain, famous charges. “It’s a special quality somehow to make them trust.” Her photographs are a diary of her being there, snapping away. But lest you think her some sort of proto-­tweeter, she declares that “I’m not interested in the iPhone or Instagram. Or … what is it called? Photo-­bombing.” Digital isn’t, to her mind, as “intime” as taking a photograph using film, when “it’s between you and the person. Talking to them. By knowing them or not knowing them. It comes out from them. Now it’s, ‘Let me see that. No, I don’t look good.’ ”       

*This article appears in the August 11, 2014, issue of New York Magazine.

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1 / 11 Photos
Ca. 1993, Gianni Versace and Elton John “They were very close. It was right after Gianni’s show; you go in the back and give a kiss.”
1994, Sophia Loren “We were at the Dior show in Paris. She saw me and turned and looked at me …”
1992, Geena Davis “We were filming her for Vanity Fair. This picture was never published, obviously. She went in the pool, and I took her picture. No,... 1992, Geena Davis “We were filming her for Vanity Fair. This picture was never published, obviously. She went in the pool, and I took her picture. No, she’s not naked.”
Interview, May 1980. “Andy called me up and asked me to do a photograph. As a joke, I said, Not if it’s not a cover, and he laughed and said, Of cours... Interview, May 1980. “Andy called me up and asked me to do a photograph. As a joke, I said, Not if it’s not a cover, and he laughed and said, Of course it’s the cover.” Photo: Conor Masterson/© Conor Masterson 2011
Ca. 1991, Azzedine Alaïa “An impeccable talent. He knows the body of women like no one … She came right over to him, and I thought it was funny. ... Ca. 1991, Azzedine Alaïa “An impeccable talent. He knows the body of women like no one … She came right over to him, and I thought it was funny. He looks like a dwarf.”
1990, Helmut Newton “He was posing for me. It was hot, in Los Angeles, after a shoot. He was my absolute master, taught me everything about the camera... 1990, Helmut Newton “He was posing for me. It was hot, in Los Angeles, after a shoot. He was my absolute master, taught me everything about the camera.”
Ca. 1989 “This was at a party during the collections in Paris. All of the Vogues were together … There’s Liz Tilberis, Bob Colacello, Franca Sozzani o... Ca. 1989 “This was at a party during the collections in Paris. All of the Vogues were together … There’s Liz Tilberis, Bob Colacello, Franca Sozzani of Italian Vogue, Colombe Pringle, the head of French Vogue at the time … That is of course Anna Wintour on André Leon Talley’s lap. At the time, they were very, very close, though not so much now.”
1992, Madonna “It was during a television ad, shooting in Los Angeles. I was doing the styling and took this picture during a break, of her eating pop... 1992, Madonna “It was during a television ad, shooting in Los Angeles. I was doing the styling and took this picture during a break, of her eating popcorn. She was on top of an elephant later.”
1990, Marc Jacobs “That was his look back then. Actually, Marc is one of the smart ones. He was talking to someone at a party, screaming at someone, a... 1990, Marc Jacobs “That was his look back then. Actually, Marc is one of the smart ones. He was talking to someone at a party, screaming at someone, after a show in New York.”
Ca. 1991, John Galliano “Poor darling. This was during his own collection in Paris. He was a charming boy at the time, an amusing talent. I don’t know... Ca. 1991, John Galliano “Poor darling. This was during his own collection in Paris. He was a charming boy at the time, an amusing talent. I don’t know what happened to him. Probably too much work.”
1996, Princess Diana and Ralph Lauren “It was at a charity dinner in Washington; I was sitting at the Clinton table. Diana had a great back. This phot... 1996, Princess Diana and Ralph Lauren “It was at a charity dinner in Washington; I was sitting at the Clinton table. Diana had a great back. This photo was in an exhibition. She died two days after we put it up.”
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